Anonymous Industrial Walkabout

Infested (2023)

Even Stephen King loves Infested!

So how come I don’t?

French filmmaker Sebastien Vanicek spins an undeniably creepy tale about the rag-tag residents of a dilapidated apartment building besieged by Middle-Eastern spiders that reproduce at an alarming rate.

Our hero, Kaleb (Théo Christine), is an exotic animal fancier and sneaker pimp with a troubled personal life. Seeking to numb his sorrows with a little retail therapy, he buys an expensive spider from a shady agent and promptly loses the little bugger once he gets home.

Next thing you know, there are spiders everywhere! Big ones, small ones, nasty ones, climbing out of every nook and cranny!

The poisonous pests lay eggs in their human victims, so they can emerge from the corpse, en masse, for maximum “ick” factor.

Kaleb’s flat is in the remarkable Picasso Arenas, near Paris, designed by architect Manuel Núñez Yanowsky, which makes for an artfully labyrinthine backdrop for the anxious apartment dwellers trapped between advancing arachnids and brutal, unsympathetic cops trying to contain the threat.

My main beef with Infested is that the spiders themselves are rather lacking in character. Once ensconced in the building, they aren’t especially aggressive, though they do erupt in an impressive array of shapes and sizes.

When I saw Arachnaphobia (1990) in the theater, the audience was so rapt that we were continually brushing our clothes due to imagined, unseen invaders.

Perhaps it was the smaller screen, but the uncanny feeling of being trapped in a web never really materialized in Infested, though not for a lack of effort by Vanicek and a likable cast that spends most of its screen time cowering in dark corners.

This is where the lion’s share of the character development takes place. Old friends confessing their various misdeeds and misunderstandings, diminishing the sense of urgency necessary to sustain tension or terror.

It’s a pretty good movie, just not all that scary. Let’s see if the Arachnophobia reboot can do any better.

You’ll Never Find Me (2023)

Welcome to a dark night of the soul. Even bad people have them.

In some nameless Australian trailer park, Patrick (Brendan Rock) sits in his living room drinking whiskey. Outside, there is thunder and lightning, just like the night Frankenstein’s creature woke up.

Patrick is alone, but not for long.

A wayward woman (Jordan Cowan), lost in the storm and soaked to the skin, pounds on his door seeking a telephone.

“You’ve knocked on the wrong door,” Patrick tells the shoeless visitor.

Of course, things are not that simple. The wrong door depends on who’s standing where.

You’ll Never Find Me, written and co-directed by Australian newcomer Indianna Bell, is an intricately constructed two-person play, featuring unexpected shifts in the power dynamic taking place over the course of a dark and stormy evening.

It’s Patrick’s house, and he’s obviously a formidable man who prefers solitude. A drenched woman with no shoes can’t possibly be a threat.

So why is he uneasy?

Patrick explains to her that feral kids living in the park routinely beat on his door and run away. Even at two in the morning during a violent storm?

That’s enough to drive anyone mad.

Gradually, Patrick warms up to his guest and promises to help her, but he’s also clearly suspicious about her point of origin. She claims she fells asleep at the beach.

“The beach?” Patrick wonders aloud, as if he’d never heard the word.

Viewers are left to puzzle and ponder the scant information provided by these mysterious players, as both sides continue to distract and interrogate the other while passing the time with a few hands of cards.

We can tell from the outset that Patrick is a (deservedly) haunted man, and as the tension in the trailer escalates, a very big decision about his future—the same one faced by Hamlet—becomes an unbearable burden.

With its single set, minimal action, and tiny, terrific cast, You’ll Never Find Me is a harrowing and claustrophobic watch, with revolving doors of trust and deception leading to the ultimate question: To be or not to be.

Original, highly rewarding, and vigorously recommended.

The Changeling (1980)

George C. Scott in an understated role as a classical composer bedeviled by spooks in Seattle? It’s true!

I reviewed The Changeling upon its release for my high school newspaper, wherein I declared it “really scary.”

More than 40 years later, I am revising my opinion. Sometimes “scary” doesn’t age well. But then, neither do I.

Ivory tickler John Russell (GCS) is a recent widower, having lost wife and daughter in a wintery road accident. He takes a teaching job at a small college in Washington state to hopefully get his head together and start composing again.

Instead, the massive mansion generously rented to him by Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere, his real-life wife) from the local historical society, comes with a ghost in the attic that wastes no time banging around upstairs, depriving the maestro of much-needed rest.

A seance arranged by Claire with a psychic couple confirms the presence of a restless child murdered in the house, and it becomes Russell’s mission to bring metaphysical justice to the situation.

Director Peter Hyams (The Relic, Time Cop), a thoroughly capable and professional filmmaker, does a thoroughly capable and professional job on The Changeling.

The problem isn’t him, it’s me.

I suppose a scene in which a possessed antique wheelchair chases Claire around the upper floors of the mansion was sufficient to make teenaged me go, “eek!”

Since then, I’ve logged thousands of hours of community service watching ghosts, ghouls, creatures, cruel killers, and assorted hell-spawn ravaging their way through humanity.

The Changeling, even with its star cast and engaging mystery, comes off as quaint and dated. Weak tea and dry toast.

It’s not simply an age thing. A masterpiece of atmosphere such as Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) requires nothing more than sound and camera movement to convince us that the supernatural world is all around us.

The Great Scott, who does not bellow, growl, or bloviate, is convincing as Russell, a (literally) haunted man vulnerable/receptive to unseen forces, due to the fresh tragedy in his life.

Though Hyams, Scott, et al, give it the old college try, their collective efforts fail to generate any genuine shock wattage in the 21st century.

Fresh (2022)

Ask anyone. The dating scene can be murder, especially if the relationship consumes you.

In director Mimi Cave’s black-comic thriller Fresh, Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a smart, witty, modern girl just looking for a meaningful nibble in her stagnant dating pool when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a super-attractive doctor at her local produce market.

After a quick roll in the sack, Noa is whisked off for a magical weekend trip with the too-good-to-be-true Steve, despite warnings from her lesbian BFF Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs) that there are some definite red flags in this picture.

Next thing Noa knows is waking up chained to a floor. This is never a good sign.

Turns out Steve has a thriving black market business that needs new blood occasionally.

“What the fuck is happening?” Noa screams at Steve.

“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to freak out,” Steve replies.

Noa is in a very bad place, but she shows grit and determination by convincing her captor that she shares his unusual tastes for the very finest cuts of meat.

Yes, it’s every bit as gruesome as you think, and then some, but Cave also sneaks in stress-relieving laughs when we need them most, particularly after one of the director’s many rapid-fire meat-cutting-and-eating montages designed to make the viewer queasy with self-loathing.

“I don’t eat animals,” Steve tells Daisy in the early days of their courtship. Not ones with four legs, anyway.

Fresh doesn’t pull any punches in its portrayal of toxic masculinity, embodied by the charmingly evil Steve, a respectable man with a home and family who just can’t resist a tempting morsel.

Unfortunately, as any upset stomach commercial ably demonstrates, sometimes your food will fight back.

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)

It appears I’m on a Carpenter Kick.

While The Thing (1982) remains one of my absolute favorite horrors, Big Trouble In Little China finds John Carpenter at the top of his game. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a film that can match it for sheer volume of fun, fights, and full-tilt frenetic action.

It’s the ideal midnight movie.

We must remember that Kurt Russell has been a leading man in Hollywood since The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Big Trouble is essentially a live-action comic book, and Russell plays hero Jack Burton as a bumbling John Wayne caricature who’s routinely saved by his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun).

Indeed, Burton’s capacity to stupidly screw up and still save the day is unmatched in my cinematic memory.

Trucker Jack Burton (Russell) gets his rig stolen after an all-night game of cards in SF’s Chinatown. The culprits are connected to David Lo Pan (James Hong) a sinister sorcerer/crime boss who has also arranged for the kidnapping of Wang’s girlfriend Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), a beautiful woman with green eyes.

From here, the plot thickens into a dark, delicious pudding of ghosts, monsters, sorcery, aerial martial arts, and a flying blade ceremony designed to make Lo Pan flesh and blood so he can wed Miao Yin after centuries of living as a formless ghost.

Unless he chooses Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), another beautiful woman with green eyes.

Like a good paella, Big Trouble is a feast for the senses as Carpenter’s cameras fly alongside supernatural warriors locked in thunderous conflict. When you combine the movie’s breathless pace with acrobatic cinematography and those distinctively quotable tough-guy cracks from Burton, the results are pure gold.

But don’t take my word for it. Let the man speak for himself.

“Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake.

“Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, ‘Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.'”

Indeed, you really can’t go wrong with the team of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Let’s watch ’em all.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Funny thing, I went to the theater and saw this when it came out. I remember liking it well enough, but Prince of Darkness is a relatively small-scale production for John Carpenter.

His previous run of films included Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, and Big Trouble In Little China, so perhaps I was missing the star power typically provided by Kurt Russell and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The real reason, I now suspect, is that Prince of Darkness is more akin to Carpenter’s earlier, grittier Assault on Precinct 13, a no-name thriller about cops fighting off a crowd of vengeful gang members while trapped in a shuttered police station.

The cast of Prince of Darkness, including vintage TV stars Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon), Thom Bray (Riptide) and Dirk Blocker (son of Dan Blocker/Hoss), are similarly under siege, this time by a seemingly synchronized horde of hobo schizophrenics led by a menacing Alice Cooper.

Carpenter’s resident authority figure Donald Pleasence plays Father Loomis (Doctor Loomis’s twin brother?), a nervous priest who discovers an infernal device in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church.

The ancient artifact, which resembles a moldy lava lamp, appears to contain some kind of organic material that’s rapidly developing consciousness after lying dormant for untold centuries.

Loomis calls in Professor Birack (Victor Wong, Egg Shen from Big Trouble) and a group of his top physics students to study the strange canister and possibly decipher the accompanying doomsday grimoire also found on the premises.

How could they know they’d be hastening the return of the titular character, even providing a human vessel for its gestation period?

Nope, didn’t see that one coming.

I would expect college students to be dopey enough to take on this insane extra-credit assignment, but distinguished scientists?

All hell proceeds to break loose, as the assembled eggheads fall victim to having unholy water squirted in their faces from newly made zombies, or getting torn apart by the mute mob of street people that have surrounded the accursed church.

Professor Birack and the increasingly agitated Loomis deduce that the evil essence contained in the canister is now fully awake and influencing people on a subatomic level. Like ants working together toward a common goal.

You get it? Carpenter? Ants?

Carpenter is at his most diabolical depicting a wounded world, teeming with swarms of furious insects, that’s clearly reached end time, requiring an act of selfless sacrifice to save the day and keep the devil—and his creeping minions—away.

The dour final frame of Prince of Darkness indicates that he won’t be gone for long. A hell of a movie.

Project Metal Beast (1995)

I will begin by reintroducing a pair of the descriptive phrases I use when reviewing my HorrificFlicks.

Anonymous Industrial Walkabout: This means the majority of the action takes place in a generic location, usually festooned with pipes, control panels, and endless nondescript doors, offices, and hallways.

Serviceable Piece of Shit: A movie that transcends its budget constraints and offers genuine entertainment value.

Project Metal Beast is a shining example of both.

Our story opens somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, as U.S. agent Donald Butler (John Marzilli) and a red-shirt subordinate are on a dangerous, top-secret mission to acquire werewolf blood.

Pretty standard, really.

Butler watches idly as a nasty specimen noshes on his comrade before dispatching the beast with silver bullets and retrieving the precious blood sample.

We quickly discover that Butler is hot-headed and impulsive, as he ignores his orders and injects himself with the dreaded Type O Super Negative.

“I will be a new kind of warrior,” he boasts. “One that can shape-change at will! With senses of an animal and the mind of a man!”

Before he can take his powers for a proper test drive, Butler is immobilized by Colonel Miller (Barry Bostwick), his sociopathic commanding officer, and frozen for 20 years.

Eventually, Butler is thawed out of retirement and given metal skin by Dr. Anne De Carlo (Kim Delaney) at the direction of Colonel Miller.

When Butler changes into an armored lycanthrope, he goes on a reasonable rampage slaughtering a stereotypical Italian chef, a nerdy scientist, and a few other nonentities.

How do you kill a metal werewolf, anyway?

Writer and director Alessandro de Gaetano is definitely operating on the cheap side of the street. The werewolf effects are ok, but the costume (worn by Friday The 13th‘s most famous Jason, Kane Hodder!) looks like a gorilla suit that went on tour with Gwar.

Between the scenes of fairly awesome wolfen mayhem there are many, many interludes of educated characters contemplating their dire situation and spouting pseudo-scientific jibber jabber.

Feel free to mute these parts and invent your own smart-ass dialogue. It’s fun!

Project Metal Beast wouldn’t be nearly such a hoot if not for Barry Bostwick’s kooky performance as the power-mad Colonel Miller, a man who seems quite delighted with the havoc he causes.

In one scene, Miller gleefully shoots a superior officer in both legs so he can’t escape the werewolf, who, sure enough, comes along and shreds the poor guy.

And when the monster turns on Miller, he is disciplined enough to straighten his uniform before being disemboweled.

Once again, we observe that it’s those little human touches that make for a memorable metal monster movie experience.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

If you’ve ever remarked aloud words to the effect of “this job is killing me,” then perhaps you can understand the kind of hell that protagonist Gilderoy (Toby Jones) faces in Berberian Sound Studio, a meticulously unnerving film by Peter Strickland.

Gilderoy is a sound editor for movies, recognized internationally as a true artisan in a mostly vulgar industry. He takes an assignment in Italy that turns out to be a lurid horror movie about the Inquisition, and finds himself at odds with everyone around him, including the raging director (Cosimo Fusco), the playboy producer (Antonio Mancino), and various unhappy actresses who complain that they haven’t been paid.

Time is measured fitfully. Gilderoy, feeling more trapped every day, is unable to get reimbursed for his airfare by a sneering secretary (Tonia Sotiropoulo), forcing him into a captivity spent devising gruesome sound effects for a movie about (mainly) torture and screaming women.

We are witness to countless taping sessions of chopping, stabbing, boiling, and mutilating many pounds of fruits and vegetables, which never seem to get cleaned up, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at a studio full of moldy produce.

And it appears the mold is growing in direct proportion to the increasing torment depicted in the film being made, which the viewer never sees.

Meanwhile, actresses continue to scream in the sound booth. The director isn’t remotely satisfied with anyone’s terror level, and bullies the hapless audio supervisor into turning things up a bit.

Not surprisingly, the mild-mannered and repressed Gilderoy begins to lose his grip on reality, cheered only by an occasional letter from his mother. Even these become sinister as the days roll by, as if the carnage he helps create in this cursed Italian production has infected every branch in his life.

Writer-director Peter Strickland has cunningly fabricated a stinging slow-burner about the frailty of the creative spirit and how the battle between art and crass commercialism can cost you your very soul—not unlike say, Barton Fink.

Berberian Sound Studio plays out as a hypnotic and haunting collage of rolling tapes, clipping VU meters, and the turning of knobs, all of which contribute to a very soft man’s ruin, brilliantly realized by veteran stage actor Toby Jones, with whom we sympathize every awful step.

It’s also a “way homer” and worth the time it takes to puzzle over. I’m still thinking on it.

Cobweb (2023)

Pity poor Peter (Woody Norman), an eight-year-old kid who just wants a decent night’s sleep, a life without bullies, and a normal mom and dad.

In Cobweb, we learn that Peter’s school days are spent hiding from evil classmate Brian (Luke Busey, a third-generation movie psycho), while his home life is watched over by his stern parents Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr), an odd, secretive couple who aren’t afraid to dish out severe punishments for being too curious.

The problem is, Peter is being kept awake at night by intermittent tapping in the walls and his freaky parents dismiss his concerns by telling him he has an overactive imagination!

Peter tries to enlist the help of Miss Devine (Cleopatra Cole), his new teacher, but her appearance at his home results in the lad getting locked in the creepy basement, where he makes further contact with someone else living in their house. Someone who develops a powerful hold over the lonely tyke.

Cobweb‘s rookie director Sam Bodin shows off a fully stocked cabinet of gothic panache, creating a nightmare landscape to rival Tim Burton, one that seems all but inescapable to our young protagonist.

Bodin and writer Chris Thomas Devlin understand a child’s limited worldview and what perceived threats can endanger it.

Question: Is it my imagination or does the creative team of this movie enjoy tormenting kids just a bit too much? In any case, Cobweb is a fiercely original film that should scare the bejesus out of any average, run-off-the-mill rugrat.

It’s not for them, anyway.

Dark Harvest (2023)

I’m going to make a bold prediction that Dark Harvest becomes a Halloween movie-night staple.

Alternately luminous and vicious, Dark Harvest is a captivating adaptation of Norman Partridge’s 2006 novel about a cursed small town that must destroy a local monster every time the calendar hits October 31.

In a seasonal swash of ultra violence, the legendary Sawtooth Jack, a pumpkin-headed demon, rises from the cornfield and is hunted by a posse of hungry high school boys. Jack must be killed before the church bells chime midnight, or the community will be plagued by storms and misfortune for an entire year.

It’s a tradition, you understand.

At harvest time, the boys from the local senior class are locked up for three days without food so they’re properly motivated to bring down Sawtooth Jack, a frightening and deadly foe that is nonetheless loaded with candy.

Director David Slade and writer Michael Gilio conjure magic, madness, and terror in a coming-of-age tale that pounces on the viewer like a midnight collaboration between Ray Bradbury (luminous) and Joe Lansdale (vicious)—with a bit of Hunger Games thrown in after some focus-group input.

Editor’s Note: The kids attend Bradbury High School.

Dark Harvest could have used more exposition and context, but the fevered sepia-toned sights of raving teenagers versus an uncanny enemy, is first-rate cinematic mayhem that actually does justice to its literary origins.

Make it a welcome addition to your annual festival of fright films, m’kay?